the eric update – day 211: million dollar baby.

it seems a different world to look back at my first post on odin’s medical bill, when i noted in astonishment that his total bill could, quite possibly, be well over $1,000,000. we haven’t added up all the numbers on all the paperwork that we’ve received, but this is only one bill amongst a pile that is beginning to rival odin’smedical record in size.

that’s right. the amount on the total line is almost a quarter of a million dollars! for one bill. amongst hundreds. and they’re still coming in the mail.

of course, as i wrote lo’ those many months ago, we’re mostly lucky – very lucky – as we don’t have to pay the vast, vast, vast majority of the bills that come everyday.

but it’s hard to be lucky 100 percent of the time.

despite our apparent luckiness, sometimes we’re suprised when we open an envelope and see big numbers next to “patient responsibility” – i.e. this what the billing party believes we should pay.

today we found this in the pile of mail. a bill for $2,455.80. are you sitting down? this is the bill for a single rsv shot. a single shot. little odin has had three shots and today we learned that only one – the very first one – was covered. which means, i guess, we can patiently wait for a second bill for almost $2,500. for a single shot.

how could this be? how could one shot be covered but not the other two? as near as we can tell, soon after we were intially approved for rsv shot my healthcare plan decided to hand their pharmacy benefits management component to caremark who has sent a letter explaining in all capital letters:

“SPECIALTY DRUGS ARE NOT ELIGABLE”

oooooh. how progressive of caremark. not only do they not cover home delivery which is known to reduce the chance of a micropreemie getting sick due to going to pediatrician’s office during the height of rsv season – but they don’t cover the rsv shot at all!

how very nice of them to take two months to notify us that significant change of benefits.

conflux - a curated confluence of curiousness

i’m not sure how to square these findings with the fact that i’ve long said that in a parallel universe very close to our own i live alone in cabin in the middle of nowhere writing manifestos: “The effect of population density on life satisfaction was therefore more than twice as large for low-IQ individuals than for high-IQ individuals,” they found. And “more intelligent individuals were actually less satisfied with life if they socialized with their friends more frequently.”

the heart warming fable of thanksgiving, unsurprisingly, ends up being a whole lot more complicated than some of us were taught and answers the nagging question of how squanto spoke perfect english when the pilgrims arrived and what was happening during the 100 year interim between columbus and the pilgrims ( spoiler: it involves human trafficking, enslavement and villages being wiped out ). and if you’re a stickler for tradition, you should put ditch the turkey and cranberry sauce for salted pork and olives since the spanyiards were the first to celebrate thanksgiving 50 years before the pilgrims.

“…researchers from a Bosch startup called Deepfield Robotics presented a paper on “Vision-Based High-Speed Manipulation for Robotic Ultra-Precise Weed Control,” which has like four distinct exciting-sounding phrases in it.”IEEE Spectrum

after updating to iOS 9 and el capitan i’ve been having troubles synching photos from my iphone to my macbook air. the mac would recognize the iphone but no photos would show up in the photos application or image capture. it was driving me nuts. turns out, if you have non-apple services like dropbox running that sync your photos to non-icloud services you have to turn them off.

having run a half a dozen marathons, i can’t imagine finishing in 3:05. even more unimaginable in full amish garb so kudos to leroy stolzfus. the whole article is great read but now i want to know more of the backstory on why he started to run: “A few years ago, Stolzfus got “involved with some stuff” he said he shouldn’t have. His brother-in-law suggested he start running instead when he was tempted. He took the suggestion to heart, and went out for a run.”

huh, who knew edward tufte has a farm with 234-acres of landscape sculpture fields that he opens to the public once a year. i’d love to make a trip. and i also love the article’s description of tufte, “[he] is also known as a genius of data visualization, professor emeritus of political science, statistics, and computer science at Yale, an author of books on information design, and a hater of PowerPoint.

“The Chagossian people have a word, in their Creole language, for heartbreak: sagren. It is a profound sorrow which refers to the loss of a home, and the impossibility of returning to it. As we build new worlds with our technologies, knitted from fiber-optic light and lines of code, it is incumbent on us to ensure it does not reproduce the erasures and abuses of the old, but properly accounts for the rights and liberties of every one of us.”citizen-ex

“There is no doubt that retail is making a big bet on health care. If it succeeds, the payoff will be enormous. But just as Uber is at war with the taxi industry, retailers will soon be at war with the large, publicly-traded health care chains.”venture beat

wow.“Beginning with this weekend’s NHL All-Star Skills Competition and All-Star Game, the NHL will use GoPro cameras to deliver viewers never-before-seen perspectives of the game.” odin and i would watch this all. day. long. A++

“Our current cultural obsession with food is undeniable. But, while the advent of the foodie may be a 21st century phenomenon, from an evolutionary standpoint, flavor has long helped define who we are as a species, a new book argues.”npr

“Here’s the thing: in order for fees to work, there needs be something worth paying to avoid. That necessitates, at some level, a strategy that can be described as “calculated misery.” Basic service, without fees, must be sufficiently degraded in order to make people want to pay to escape it. And that’s where the suffering begins.”the new yorker